10/23 Class Notes

Ellen- The dramaturgy assignment was an impossible one. The idea behind it was to probe how to write about performance without failing to keep faith with what is critically productive. It relied upon knowing yourself, what you bring to a performance, and the standard to which you hold a production. A dramaturg has the opportunity to declare their loyalties while still being self reflective in a critically productive way that does not hold others' productions to their standards.

Radical productions of Shakespeare often clear space for themselves by disassociating with other productions. With that in mind, this assignment was to highlight a specific moment of the implementation of a dramaturgical concept and give an an account of how it worked in one of four scenes.

Amy- asked Justin to discuss his post.

Justin- I wrote this post as methodological approach for illuminating a confusing term in the test—beaver. in text. A dramaturg might advise the director how to use his concept to enrich such a term. For example, in terms of Gavin's motorcycle concept: Since a “beaver” once was a visor of helmet, choosing to stage Richard's actions so that he opens the visor of his motorcycle helmet while saying “beaver” illuminates the term within the director's concept. It indicates the world we are in and tells the story.

In the ghost scene, Richard's action of putting a physical object on his head, failed to protect him from the ultimate source of his undoing, if you interpret the ghosts as an internal force, as an external object cannot guard against the products of the mind.

Amy- Great. Let's talk about this production in the way Ellen suggested. How do we engage as critics? How do we respond separately from our expectations of the ideal performances that we would like to see. Think of specific things from production that you would like to offer the discussion.

Ellen- Do some retro-engineering work. Where was dramaturgy happening? Observations of dramaturgy often provide useful opportunities for critical engagement.

Amy- If you haven't seen Richard III, think of moments from Black Watch or Equivocation.

(We then made a list of moments we could discuss)

Iris- Gavin's prologue, Elizabeth I, the fact checker (specifically how it was difficult to see it), and the spiked heads.

Derek- Schizophrenic approach to the speech after Richard's dream and the coronation scene. Anne was clearly drugged.

Jess- She had a bottle of prescription pills.

Sara- The choices to double cast of Edward IV and Richmond as well as grant Elizabeth I some of Richmond's final speech presented the concepr of the divine right/line of kings.

Andrea- Elizabeth I in Tudor full gear, the political ads at the top of the show, and Richard's action of licking Anne's spit from his fingers.

Justin- The anonymity of the fact checker- history was being rewritten, but we didn't know who was writing it. Also, choosing to cast women as the two princes.

Sara- How does staging Margaret as a ghostlike figure impact the cutting of the ghosts?

Kelly- wanted to discuss the cuts, especially as Gavin seems frivolous in his approach to making them.

Jenna- brought up cuts and their relation of Margaret and the ghosts.

Ming- Costume choices, particularly the striking choice of putting Elizabeth I in Tudor dress.

Cody- Casting of Clarence and Richard- the bodied actor of Clarence was clearly younger than Richard. How does that relationship impact Clarence's role as an obstacle to Ricahrd's path to the throne?

Courtney- In Black Watch- the double casting of the sergeant and the interviewer. Also interested in the dance like fight choreography.

Derek- Reading Regeneration by Pat Barker inspired him to view Black Watch's characters and their frustration as being sitting ducks as an emasculating aspect of war.

Amy- Good. Now, what might require further investigation?

Kelly- would like to look at what cuts were made and what Gavin attempted to achieve in making them. Specifically, why did he almost cut the section of the speech that describes how dogs bark as he passes them? Even if that section is repetitive, it grants additional information.

Ellen- Studying cuts to Shakespeare is often unique, because cuts can feel egregious if they effect our favorite lines. Noticing such cuts allows you to feel like a “good spectator,” but is that productive? Haven't there been cinematic versions of Shakespeare without text? (Japanese King Lear)

Dorothy- It's useful to separate what you do as a critic with the formation of your own value judgments. If it is not heinous and noticeable, and the cut and can be explained, then criticism on that front is useful. But if it the objection to a cut stems from the idea that“Shakespeare is great” and you shouldn't alter it, that objection has less critical value

Ellen- There is no historical reason to keep faith with the whole text and there is certainly a pragmatic reason to make cuts. We never start from a neutral point of view- Whitney's post is a good example. Her concept was cross contaminated by Equivocation and Macbeth's “untimely ripped”reference,. In that way, her viewing of Richard III is evidence of how prior theatrical experiences jump into our viewings of current productions.

Amy- How do you create a critical prompt that may answer critical methodological questions?

Kelly may talk about impractical cutting, but we must always ask why impractical cutting is important. We must ask, “Who cares?” It's not fair to say cutting is impractical due to a like or dislike of Shakespeare. Rather, you must prove the stakes of your argument in asking the question about cutting. For instance- If you say that the poetry of a cut section was instrumental to creating the world of the play, you'll need to mount an argument that that claim matters. How do we decide was pieces of performance tests are useful for criticism? By noting why they matter.

Ming- and not because of what it makes us feel? What is the place of feeling in this conversation?

Dorothy- What kind of feeling?

Derek- Feeling of sacredness?

Dorothy- Feelings they evoke in you or reactions against choices made by the director?

Ming- Both.

Iris-It is important when you have a visceral reaction- like when Richard licks Anee's spit from his finger. Have that “Oh God” moment, but then look back and see why you may have had that reaction.

Jess- Having feelings is similar to tracking changes in meter. They are both signposts that tell you to pay attention to what is going on onstage. For me, theatre is about evoking emotion. If don't feel something when see production, we as artists, have failed.

Ellen- Avoid immediate reactions of like/don't like unless to analyze their implications. Instead, think about more complex reactions- think about transport and self loss. How does one pay attention to self loss? People like Berlant insert themselves into this question. We as critics are taught to privilege a Davis like theatricality, to stay distanced and make observations. But that type of critical eye doesn't account for the full spectrum of what theatre does. How do we keep faith with self reflection and emotional reaction? This is one of the questions we wish to probe in this class.

Amy- Davis may want to claim being above having emotional reactions, but that's not really possible. As critics how do we respond to our emotional investments? It is very safe/ yummy to be in a place of disliking something. Dislike is an emotional reaction that can be painted as intellectual superiority. But really, you're just enthralled with the your ability to be critical.

It is east to treat Shakespeare as a reliquary object with which you have a monogamous relationship. But theatre denies that type of relationship. You are forced to see that there are other people in the room with you. How can you include their opinions and emotions in a fruitful way?

Ellen- There is a problem problem in making intelligence equivalent to dispassion. It is incumbent for us to risk enchantment in order to register where a full performance might take place. For instance, Phelan recaptures a lost event through the lens of a methodology in which she has interest, performance studies. We may have found difficulty with the contortions of the performance to fit her methodology, but her work is doing what Levin asks us to do by 1- stating what is presented and 2- showing how what is being presented fits into a larger argument.

Amy- Let's deploy our conversation to the debates. What does it mean to look at the debates as performance? If asked to discuss them as performances, what sort of things would you discuss in a criticism independent of politics.

Dorothy- It's important to remember that the debates are not actually spontaneous. The participants have a lot of time before hand to decide how they will perform during the debate and how they will portray their character.

Jennifer- That sounds like Auslander's layers of being. Which persona is put forward? What aspects of persona is shown in the first debate as opposed to the second or third?

Amy- It is important to perform the missing scriptiveness- the appearance of spontaneity.

Dorothy- In the first debate, Obama not aggressive. Was there a worry about appearing like angry black man? How preplanned was that worry? Was it spontaneous? Did they have meetings about it? How much would a topic like that play in the back of the mind during a performance?

Courtney- The fact that there is a winner indicates that we value how someone can be more rhetorically awesome than another.

Derek- We could look at where they are looking/facial expressions- at camera, knowing glances at moderator..

Amy- So, we might say that eye contact as performance gesture could be a way to analyze political performance without criticizing politics.

Jess- We can also look at costume (flag pins). Blue and red are the only colors available for ties. What does that show about a need to appear patriotic? Also, analyzing the bodies and fashions of politicians wives gives an insight into how that person might choose a partner. The partner's body is a visual symbol of the types of choices a candidate might make.

Andrea- We can look at the body language of the initial handshake.

Sara- I'm interested in the role social media has played in the debates. Is there a way to note how the massive retweet of the horses and bayonets line may affect performance?

Ellen- We might ask how the audience impacts the performance. Why are they there?

Justin- Sometimes they do break through the performance. Laughter indicates their presence.

Ming- They are there for the performers,

Sara- Rachel Maddow was discussing how there has only been one televised debate without an audience (in the Nixon era). It was a huge flop. A debate isn't a conversation between two people, the purpose of debate is to perform for voters. They must speak to us.

Ellen- That's certainly an ontological claim about performance- that it requires both audience and performer.

Cody- I don't watch the debates live, but watch commentary of the debates. The people assembled outside people often dress like they are at a sporting event. There dress may indicate the side they support, but they cannot effect what is going on insider the building where the debates occur. They feel the need for constant engagement even if their engagement has little effect.

Jennifer- When I watch the debates after they've already aired, I see things that I didn't catch during the performance. As Wexler argues, photographs have the power to capture and encapsulate a moment that may not have had much impact in its moment.

Derek- When I was watching online, the screen would often buffer and pause the debate on an unnatural facial expression. If you snap a picture there, did that moment actually happen? Probably not, but it still exists.

Ellen- What does that tell us about liveness? We are in a moment when need to extrapolate the argument of human ephemerality. Digital records play in conjunction with the debates, so what counts as presence? If we don't experience the live event of the debates, but watch a live recording, can we be caught in the aura of the event? How is that like theatre? For instance, the promotional image for Richard III depicts Richard on a motorcycle, but that is an image which doesn't occur in the production.

What are we consuming-in the moment of performance? How do preconsumed objects like the publicity still or information gleaned from a program inform our consumption? What does the disconnect between preconsumed objects and the live consumption of performance tell us about how we watch performances? What is the methodology in our watching?

Jess- Production image “tames” the production- They are made weeks before a production is realized, so a disconnect is inherent.

Sara- But this publicity image was made recently- We already knew what the sets and costumes would look like but made a conscious choice to convey something about “motorcycle” that Gavin wasn't attempting to convey in the production. There was not a motorcycle on stage, so was the motorcycle motif a metaphor or a cognitive blend? Without an actual bike we are asked to not how the masculinity of a biker guy would impact the masculinity of kingliness.

Amy- I'd say it was an attempt at a blend, but any costume choice would be. But question would be how are we primed to go into the blend? What can be usefully borrowed from the motorcycle concept and what can't?

Derek- A the reception after Friday's performance- Jonathan Michaelsen mentioned that Gavin wanted full period costume, but couldn't use them because of budget restrictions. So, he was forced to think of something different.

Dorothy- But he wasn't forced to choose motorcycles.

Derek- We can't know Gavin's process, but there could be a connection to motorcycles. A motorcycles is called a hog and a boar is a hog. Since Richard's symbol is the boar, that could connect to motorcycles. Since we are left to conjure the image of the absent motorcycle, the publicity still could be a type of ghosting.

Courtney- To what extent is our discussion of Gavin being affected by the disingenuous nature of his comments in the talk back? Surely the fact that his production is staged at IU would have influenced his conception of the play.

Iris- I struggled with his assertion that the production occurs in 1483 but is not set in any time period. We see those boom boxes!

Dorothy- How do our opinions formed during the session with Gavin impact our reactions while engaging with the performance?

Ellen- I noted that there was no commitment of biker gangs whatsoever, but there was a commitment to the iconography (badges) that biker gangs allowed the costumer to use. In reference to Cody's post,the leather was evocative in a way that pushed self satire. The motorcycle gang was as histrionic as screeching monarchical dynasties. The leather was probably not supposed to work in that way, but its presence gives allows us to make a self satisfying observation about its use.

Amy- Where might we see evidence of satire and how might we push it?

 

Ellen- Bad facial hair. The disco battle is an example of something almost tumbling into self parody. Staging histories “straight” in terms of the final battle scene is really hard- We aren't watching a battle, but choreography. One way to acknowledge that is to stage it in a presentational way. Accept the difficulty. Batman and Robin gives an example of how people who have never been in an urban environment might imagine it to work. Richard III did the same thing. It gave us an image of biker from people who could only imagine biker to function. It was over citational. We never lost the sense that we were talking about kings and queens of England rather than about biker gangs.Since the propaganda of the English monarchy was one element of the production, they could have pushed the motorcycle concept to make a the satirical statement. If a play has a critical edge that an interpretation deploys, look at what is being amassed. Always find ways to see the production's investment as a choice rather than a mistake. That way, we can always find meaning, even if it wasn't intended.

Amy- Returning to liveness in the debates- think about reconsidering what is actually live. It may be important to think that the debates are spontaneous in that they might impact voters' decisions, but at this point, there are probably only five undecided voters left. The liveness of what is being staged is a desire to catch your opponent in a mistake. We're all really waiting to pounce on a gaff and use it for our advantage—that is the unspoken performance that is really being staged.

Next time, we'll think about Ming's affect question. Ngai will move us into thinking about thinking about not thinking.